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The United Conservative Party will commit to returning Alberta to a flat tax on income, ensuring equal funding for private schools and increasing privately funded, privately delivered health care services if proposed draft policies are adopted by UCP members this spring. UCP members last week received a 21-page draft policy framework drawn up by a […]

A city politician who has missed three consecutive council meetings has informed her colleagues she will be absent from next week’s multi-day budget deliberations in order to “spend time with penguins and icebergs” in Antarctica. In a memo obtained by Postmedia, longtime Ward 13 Coun. Diane Colley-Urquhart said the trip to the Earth’s southernmost continent, […]

By Colin Craig This past September, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation began taking a closer look into city council’s golden pension entitlements and called for reform. Given some of the public commentary out there, and comments by some council members, it’s important for the public to know the facts. First, let’s be clear. We believe council […]

In a city budget that offers few new bus drivers, police officers or city planners, there’s a significant boost to the staff that talk to Calgarians about what those other workers do. The city’s communications and engagement team will add 10 new full-time employees next year and another five in 2016, according to the draft budget. That’s a bigger hiring boost than Calgary Police Service will get over that period — and it’s a quantum leap proportionally, as the police currently employ about 2,500 people compared to the engagement section’s 25.

The Alberta government says an estimated $160-million diversion canal and dry reservoir west of Calgary is a “cost-effective” solution to protecting city residents vulnerable to flooding. But the province’s own preliminary analysis shows it would be cheaper to compensate homeowners for damages every time the Elbow River overflows its banks during the next century than pay now for the massive mitigation project.

EDMONTON — Two of the four MLAs who triggered byelections with their sudden resignations this year will receive a lucrative payout under a now-defunct golden parachute program. Former premier Dave Hancock and Calgary-Foothills MLA Len Webber will take home more than $1 million in transition allowance between them after retiring from the Alberta legislature.

Leaked documents show that when the province’s freshly-appointed education minister was a trustee with the city’s public school board six years ago he pushed for approval of a new headquarters despite the fact district administrators had no clear plan of how to pay for the escalating cost of what had become a $285-million deal.

City politicians are cheeky for grumbling about the cost of complying with requests filed under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Talk about losing their connection with voters — they put their names forward for well-compensated public service, then have the nerve to say that the cost of providing information to curious Calgarians has become a burden.

The cost and burden of transparency laws are irking some Calgary councillors, but the city’s top official on information requests thinks it would be unfair to hike access fees. Coun. Ray Jones and Mayor Naheed Nenshi both spoke out Monday after their aides spent days responding to a query under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy act for details of all the gifts councillors have given to the public.

Tory leadership candidate Ric McIver took aim at front-runner Jim Prentice on Wednesday, saying questions over his flights as a federal cabinet minister will continue to dog the party if he wins Saturday’s leadership vote. In a breakfast speech to the Economic Club of Canada, McIver said that after the allegations of entitlement that helped bring down former premier Alison Redford, the Progressive Conservative government can’t afford a leader with any similar baggage.

EDMONTON — Scarcely more than a month after cabinet minister Diana McQueen was hit with a $14,000 cellphone bill in Europe, she was billed another $3,700 in roaming charges on a government trip to Poland. McQueen, who was environment minister at the time of the trips in the fall of 2013, was successful in having the first bill reduced to $191, but taxpayers paid $3,697 for the cellphone use on the second trip.

EDMONTON — Alberta’s surplus is forecast to grow by $300 million to nearly $1.4 billion this year, enabling the province to slash $2.8 billion in planned borrowing for its capital plan, Finance Minister Doug Horner said Wednesday. “We’re investing more cash into building infrastructure, which is reducing the amount of money we’re borrowing,” he said as he released the province’s first quarter fiscal update at the legislature. “Albertans have told this government loud and clear that we must continue to build the infrastructure to meet the demand for schools, hospitals and roads that we need now.”

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling on the provincial government to change landlord-tenant legislation to allow the eviction of high-income renters continuing to live in public housing complexes. An access-to-information request filed by the CTF found 31 tenants who earn more than $100,000 a year are living in properties run by the Calgary Housing Company.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation says the latest controversy surrounding former premier Alison Redford’s use of government airplanes shows why Albertans need the ability to fire their MLAs. On Friday, the CTF launched a petition campaign to push the government to bring in MLA recall legislation.

The province’s decision to spend $18 million restoring the Kananaskis Country Golf Course has politicians, environmentalists and members of the public bickering over the wisdom of the move. Called “baffling” by the Alberta Wilderness Association and “wasteful” by the Canadian Taxpayers Association, the decision to rebuild the flood-damaged 36-hole facility is being praised by those who see it as an investment in a lesser known region of the province.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation turned back political time Monday, launching a new debt clock in an attempt to shame the Progressive Conservative government into reversing its plan to borrow billions of dollars to pay for public infrastructure. The digital device, which tracks the growth of the provincial debt, harkens back to the debt clock used by the Laurence Decore-led Liberals in the 1993 provincial election.

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